Arab States

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials are exploring ways to transform the president's unspecific promise to resolve the Palestinian issue into a concrete peace process based on principles he outlined in his State of the Union message.Following his trip to the Middle East two weeks ago, Secretary of State James Baker met in Washington last week with several Mideast officials, including representatives of Jordan, Egypt and West Bank Palestinians as well as the Israeli ambassador, Zalman Shoval.

KAL's cartoon of March 24 depicting President Barack Obama disinterring a dove representing the two-state solution, only to see the dove shot at by "Israeli extremists" and "Palestinian extremists" is witty, clever, and inaccurate. The cartoon lazily rehashes the simplistic but false narrative that zealots on both sides are responsible for continuation of the conflict and equally to blame for the lack of a peaceful resolution. In reality, the fact that in 2013, a Palestinian state does not exist is attributable to the 1947 Arab rejection of the UN partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states; Yasir Arafat's 2000 rejection of the contiguous Palestinian state offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in negotiations at Taba; and President Mahmoud Abbas' 2008 rejection of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer of a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- As the United States searches for a new formula for Arab-Israeli peace talks, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have begun to search for Palestinian leaders from within the Israeli-occupied territories at the expense of the Palestine Liberation Organization.The Arab states seek to punish PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat for his support of Iraq but also to maintain their demands for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

A new issue has popped up in the Presidential race. Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with the state of the U.S. economy. It is about a new world order that has removed familiar (and in some cases pro-American) leaders from strategically important Arab countries. And the next tricky chapter concerns what to do in war-torn Syria. The challenges are familiar. A despotic regime uses its loyal military to maintain power. Its allies prop up a terrorist-friendly dictator. Various sectarian factions fight the government (and sometimes themselves)

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said yesterday that his administration will sponsor a fall meeting of Israeli, Palestinian and Arab leaders to try to revive Middle East peace efforts aimed at the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Bush, seeking to build support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his power struggle with the militant Hamas movement, said the United States also is prodding other countries, including Arab states, to step up donations to Abbas' government.

As President Hu Jintao of China made his first state visit to Saudi Arabia yesterday, his arrival in Riyadh offered the latest sign of shifting winds across the oil-rich Persian Gulf region: China has grown as a major market for oil, and Arab states have begun turning to it as an alternative to the United States and Europe in other areas. "We are opening new channels; we are heading east," said Prince Walid bin Talal, a billionaire investor and member of the royal family. "China is a big consumer of oil. Saudi Arabia needs to open new channels beyond the West.

CAIRO, Egypt -- Syria, Egypt and six Persian Gulf countries gave general backing yesterday to President Bush's approach to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict amid hints that encouraging steps by Israel could open the way to the Arabs' making peace with the Jewish state.Meanwhile, Secretary of State James A. Baker III appeared likely to meet in Israel with Palestinian representatives at a session sanctioned by, but not including, the Palestine Liberation Organization.The two developments capped the first leg of Mr. Baker's postwar mission to shore up regional security arrangements, restart the Arab-Israeli peace process and spur economic cooperation in the region.

A new issue has popped up in the Presidential race. Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with the state of the U.S. economy. It is about a new world order that has removed familiar (and in some cases pro-American) leaders from strategically important Arab countries. And the next tricky chapter concerns what to do in war-torn Syria. The challenges are familiar. A despotic regime uses its loyal military to maintain power. Its allies prop up a terrorist-friendly dictator. Various sectarian factions fight the government (and sometimes themselves)

IF THE gulf war reminded Israelis of the threat to their existence from an Arab state, it did the same to many Arab states. To Arab states in the coalition, the monster was proved to be, not the old bugbear, Israel, but the enemy within, Iraq.For Israelis, the war was yet another indication of the fundamental fact that, for good or bad, they are part of the Middle East and will have to live with Arabs. Once their separate realizations coalesce, Arab and Jew may be more willing to give peace a chance, the former by accepting that Israel is real, and the latter by trading land for peace.

The aftermath of the Persian Gulf war confronts Israel with crucial test of its leaders' seriousness about peace and willingness to take political risks.On the positive side, Israel gained worldwide praise for its restraint in not retaliating against Iraqi Scud missile attacks, and the war demonstrated emphatically that the United States is serious about its commitment to Israel's security.But the new warmth in its ties with the United States has been tempered by familiar haggling over how much Israel deserves to be compensated for the added costs it incurred during the war. Agreement was reached last week on a $650 million deal; Israel originally had asked for $1 billion.

Gerald Otten and others appear to have forgotten the history of the Middle East ("The United Nations created a Jewish state; it can also create a Palestinian one," May 31). The United Nations did act on Palestinian statehood in 1947; two states were created by the declaration. However, the so-called Palestinians rejected their statehood by attacking the Jewish state alongside the surrounding Arab states, and afterward by choosing to live on UN handouts in refugee camps instead of creating their own state in the territories they possessed.

The article in The Baltimore Sun, "For Israel, change could be unsettling" (Feb. 5), accurately describes the trepidation the only democracy in the Middle East feels, in light of the recent tumultuous uprisings that have surrounded it. However, part of the reason for that "unsettling" feeling might be because while most of the world heard about Tunisia's revolution, few are aware, as The Jerusalem Post reported, that unidentified assailants set...

Native Americans live right next door My family celebrates Thanksgiving the same way we celebrate Columbus Day: We participate in sweat lodge and pipe ceremonies to mourn the loss our ancestors suffered in the colonization of what became America and to honor the sacrifices made by our ancestors to enable us to be here. It's a small act of defiance but an important way of asserting that the indigenous people of this land are indeed still here. I was pleased, then, to see that The Sun published Andrew L. Yarrow's commentary in its Thanksgiving Day issue ("Reach out to American Indians the other 364 days of the year," Opinion Commentary, Nov. 22)

WASHINGTON -- Tomorrow's Mideast peace conference, behind the walls that guard the U.S. Naval Academy campus, is surrounded by misconceptions. For starters, it's not a negotiation. No one will be locking Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas into a room, there to stay until they've solved some of the Middle East's thorniest problems. Much of the arm-twisting associated with the conference will already have occurred by the time the leaders arrive in Annapolis -- it's what President Bush and the State Department have been doing for weeks, just to get them to show up. Nor is it clear that the one-day meeting will produce anything very substantial.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's father liked to quote the Woody Allen line that 90 percent of life is just showing up. In fact, George H.W. Bush's signal achievement in Middle East diplomacy came from persuading leaders and representatives from Israel and much of the Arab world to show up for a peace conference in Madrid at the end of October 1991. It wasn't easy. Then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III traveled and negotiated for months to remove obstacles blocking this face-to-face meeting of longtime enemies.

PHILADELPHIA -- Is it a peace conference? Where will it be held, and what is its purpose? The Bush team is supposedly organizing a major international meeting in mid-November that could revive the near-dead Israeli-Palestinian peace process and expand it to other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is deeply involved and has just been to the region to see Israeli and Palestinian leaders. But with November less than six weeks away, there's no firm date or venue for the meeting, and no one's certain who will attend.

WASHINGTON -- The United States wants Europe, Japan and Canada to join the multilateral phase of Middle East peace talks, at least in part to increase the financial incentive for Arabs and Israelis to reach a settlement, according to foreign diplomats here.The region's economic development is expected to be one of the key topics in the talks between Israel and a number of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf countries and all the North African states except Libya.

Gerald Otten and others appear to have forgotten the history of the Middle East ("The United Nations created a Jewish state; it can also create a Palestinian one," May 31). The United Nations did act on Palestinian statehood in 1947; two states were created by the declaration. However, the so-called Palestinians rejected their statehood by attacking the Jewish state alongside the surrounding Arab states, and afterward by choosing to live on UN handouts in refugee camps instead of creating their own state in the territories they possessed.

WASHINGTON -- Back in the spring, the Bush administration fashioned a new diplomatic approach to Iraq, pulling together a coalition of the moderate arc in the region. Under pressure from regional allies, it made a push for talks between Israelis and Palestinians. And, notably, it started talking to Iran, the first formal talks in 30 years, which were hailed as a breakthrough. Now, the threat of Iran has become one of the reasons for having to stay in Iraq, and rather than engaging, the policy is to isolate both Iran and Syria.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said yesterday that his administration will sponsor a fall meeting of Israeli, Palestinian and Arab leaders to try to revive Middle East peace efforts aimed at the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Bush, seeking to build support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his power struggle with the militant Hamas movement, said the United States also is prodding other countries, including Arab states, to step up donations to Abbas' government.